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+--- Thread: [Talk] Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 (/thread-2953.html)
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - Aga Tentakulus - 21-10-2019
I have read the whole newspaper text again exactly, and even studied.
Now I have to be fair to Prof. Touwaide's statement. He writes yes, "A forgery from the past".
I can still understand that someone in the 1600 century wanted to take revenge on other scholars as a kind of fake. In mind, and you don't understand that now.
Prof. Marina Formica confirms that in her opinion it is a fake, but leaves out a temporal indication.
Interestingly, a lot was said without really saying anything.
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - -JKP- - 21-10-2019
(21-10-2019, 06:08 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(20-10-2019, 11:41 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I looked through Touwaide's credentials and academic history.
I had assumed he had a background in historical botany, so I couldn't understand why he described plant structures in such an unorthodox and unbotanical (and somewhat misleading) way. It turns out he has an interest in historical pharmacy but his early academic work was mainly in classics, oriental history and philology.
JKP, when you call his view unorthodox, unbotanical and misleading, and blame it on his background, then the necessary question becomes what is your background in order to make such a statement...
Rene, I didn't "blame" it on his background. I looked into his background to see why his botanical comments are so unbotanical and misleading. I wanted to understand why because I THOUGHT part of his academic training was in botany based on the many things I've seen on the Web with his name on it. I was mistaken. His academic background is mainly in history (his botanical interests are related to his professional activities in historical medicine). I shared what I found in case other people are interested.
My background in plants (which includes the indexing and categorization of more than 21,000 plants, 10 years working on a regional herbarium collection, and a lifelong passion for gardening) is good enough to recognize when someone doesn't know how to describe phytomorph structures properly and uses analogies that are misleading.
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - ReneZ - 21-10-2019
The problem I see here is similar to the discussion about the meso-american theory of Tucker and Janick.
Note that I have had quite some discussions with Jules Janick, which were always fair and friendly.
Touwaide argued that Tucker and Talbot are not historians, and Janick argued that Touwaide is not a botanist.
Now the object being discussed is not a plant but an old book, so for me a historian is better placed than a botanist to judge it. (Of course there are also botanists specialisting in old herbal books.....)
My only point here is just that I have a bit more respect for the opinion of specialists when talking about their area of expertise. Some of them are not specialists, but authorities in their field.
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - -JKP- - 21-10-2019
I am not going to show respect for incorrect statements and poor analogies based on credentials... certainly not on a forum devoted to research!
I wasn't questioning Touwaide's personality or his professional work. I was questioning his NUMEROUS very questionable statements about the Voynich Manuscript. I looked up his academic history because I wanted to know why a botanist (it turned out he wasn't a botanist) would make such strange statements about plants.
It's perfectly possible to respect the PERSON and their professional achievements and still disagree with wrong statements. On ninja, I think we are striving for good research, good analogies, and good interpretations.
Touwaide's statements about the plant shapes were misleading from BOTH a botanical and pedagogical point of view. If you know plants, then you can see right away why it's a bad analogy to compare a scabrous calyx from a plant that is probably in the aster family to the fruiting capsule of a poppy. He should have used more neutral terms (e.g., jug, vase) rather than misleading terms that imply that the VMS structure might be a seed capsule, which makes no sense. If you take his statements about the plants as a whole, it sounds like he doesn't know how to "read" a medieval plant drawing. But even if he does, he's misleading the audience with the way he explained it.
In fact, even the statement about the "eyes" in the other plant could be argued to be questionable from a historical/iconographical point of view. In medieval plant drawings, dots in the fruiting bodies almost always refer to seeds. I know this from studying medieval botanical drawings for the last 12 years. Also, there are other VMS drawings where the dots refer to seeds, so it is not just one drawing. Why didn't he mention this? He referred to them as eyes.
How do those statements help the audience understand the VMS? He should have laid out the possibilities (seeds, pores, eyes, etc.) or, if he was short on time, he should have chosen the more reasonable interpretation, rather than the one that is less likely from a medieval phytomorph point-of-view. In fact, why did he choose that plant, when there are better drawings to get the point across?
Everyone makes mistakes, and no one has expertise in every area, and if the talk had provided new insights, I wouldn't have said anything other than a big Thank You to Marco for sharing it and to Touwaide for giving it, but when you read a summary in which 80% of Touwaide's statements are questionable or based on unsupported assumptions, then it would be irresponsible to stay quiet.
I think he muddied the waters (and focused too much on fringe theories) rather than giving his audience something useful to help them understand the VMS.
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - ReneZ - 22-10-2019
JKP, I meant respect for his professional opinion of course. In particular in his field of expertise.
Whatever he sees in the illustrations I would like to understand better and I think that it could be valuable.
It does not mean that the MS is a modern fake. For one, it doesn't really follow from the argument (it could just as well be an old meaningless MS) and on top of that there is quite solid evidence that the MS is a genuine old MS that was circulating in Bohemia in the early 1600's.
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - davidjackson - 22-10-2019
Did Touwaide actually use the terminology of capsule or was this just a translation choice?
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - ReneZ - 22-10-2019
Touwaide was speaking to a general audience, not specialists, so I am not sure if it matters a lot....
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - -JKP- - 22-10-2019
(22-10-2019, 06:11 AM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Did Touwaide actually use the terminology of capsule or was this just a translation choice?
He compared it directly to a poppy in terms of shape (he did this at least twice), so even if there is confusion in translation of the word "capsule" (which can easily happen, a problem I appreciate and make allowances for), I don't think there's anything ambiguous about the word poppy.
He is comparing two structures with different functions and completely overlooking the fact that his VMS "poppy capsule" is a pretty good drawing of a scaly or scabrous calyx of a plant that has not yet gone to seed, a shape and texture that is particularly indicative of certain families of plants (in other words, something that partiicularly jumps out to botanists as an important key to identification).
This is not just a matter of adjusting terminology for a lay audience (I do that all the time, I'm sure many of us do) , this is a misunderstanding of the drawing itself.
I'll say it again, whether he is speaking to a lay audience or not, this is a poor analogy in both botanical terms and pedagogical terms and it also calls into question (when combined with his other comments about plants, which are also off-base) that he may be mis-reading the plant iconography.
2. Comparison of Manuscripts
ALSO, the herbal Touwaide chose as similar to the VMS (LJS 62) is NOT particularly similar to the VMS. It's quite different from the VMS (there are only a few folios of plant drawings at the beginning) and more similar to early modern drawings in terms of its leaning toward naturalism. There are no strange roots as in the VMS (there is one root with snakes next to it, but this was very common in herbal manuscripts). There are no highly stylized leaves (as in the VMS leaves that look like fish or birds). It is mostly naturalistic. He chose a set of drawings that is NOT very similar to the VMS (and one that was created anywhere from 70 to 100 years later than the VMS).
It is a strange choice for an example.
René, this isn't about one thing...
I could forgive one thing or two things or even three things that were a little off-base, but ALL his comments about plants in the Mandragora presentation are the kind that make you scratch your head, and react, "What???". EVERYTHING he said about plants gives me the impression of someone who hasn't spent a lot of time looking at the VMS plant drawings and doesn't even know which diagrams to choose to make any particular point about the drawings, and I even get the feeling he hasn't looked at them enough to recognize HOW the VMS illustrator draws each specific part of a plant.
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - Helmut Winkler - 22-10-2019
Alain is not really interested in the text, and his conclusion that the MS is not a 'serious medical MS' but like a parody of one, is based on the herbal illustrations. This is something that one has to take seriously in my opinion. The forensic dating should be left to those specialists, and the palaeography to others.
This is a position difficult to accept, I would say the text is the key to everything
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - ReneZ - 22-10-2019
I am not sure....
I see a tendency that 80% (*) of all posts here are concentrating on the illustrations.
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Note *: beware: invented number.